What is "masking"

Mask \Mask\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Masked; p. pr. & vb. n. Masking.]

1. To cover, as the face, by way of concealment or defense against injury; to conceal with a mask or visor.

   They must all be masked and vizarded.
   --Shak.

2. To disguise; to cover; to hide.

   Masking the business from the common eye.
   --Shak.

3. (Mil.)

   1. To conceal; also, to intervene in the line of.

   2. To cover or keep in check; as, to mask a body of troops or a fortress by a superior force, while some hostile evolution is being carried out.

n. 1 The act by which something is masked. 2 An entertainment at which the guests conceal their faces with masks. vb. (present participle of mask English)

1. n. the act of concealing the existence of something by obstructing the view of it; "the cover concealed their guns from enemy aircraft" [syn: cover, covering, screening]

2. the blocking of one sensation resulting from the presence of another sensation; "he studied auditory masking by pure tones"

3. scenery used to block the audience's view of parts of the stage that should not be seen [syn: masking piece]

In art, craft, and engineering, masking is the use of materials to protect areas from change, or to focus change on other areas.

Masking can describe either the techniques and materials used to control the development of a work of art by protecting a desired area from change; or a phenomenon that (either intentionally or unintentionally) causes a sensation to be concealed from conscious attention.

The term is derived from the word "mask", in the sense that it hides the face from view.

Masking is a process in which an individual changes or "masks" their natural personality to conform to social pressures, abuse, and/or harassment. Some examples of masking are a single overly dominant temperament, or humor, two incongruent temperaments, or displaying three of the four main temperaments within the same individual. Masking can be strongly influenced by environmental factors such as authoritarian parents, rejection, and emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. An individual may not even know he or she is wearing a mask because it is a behavior that can take many forms.

Masking should not be confused with masking behavior which is to mentally block feelings of suffering as a survival mechanism.

The masking effect or masking is a visual style, dramatic convention, and literary technique described by cartoonist Scott McCloud in his book Understanding Comics in the chapter on realism. It is the use of simplistic, archetypal, narrative characters, even if juxtaposed with detailed, photographic, verisimilar, spectacular backgrounds. This may function, McCloud infers, as a mask, a form of projective identification. His explanation is that a familiar and minimally detailed character allows for a stronger emotional connection and for viewers to identify more easily.

It is used in animation, comics, illustration, video games (especially visual novels) and other media. It is common in Western graphic novels and Japanese comics and animation. The psychology behind the masking effect has been extended to rendering antagonists in a realistic manner in order to show their otherness from the reader.

Masking can mean:

• Applying or using a face mask
• Auditory masking, sensory phenomena where the perception of one sound is affected by another
  • Temporal masking
  • Simultaneous masking
• Backmasking, a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward
• Backward masking in psychovisual or psychoacoustics
• Female masking, a form of male cross-dressing
• Masking (in art), protecting a selected area from change during production
• Materials used to protect portions of a work from unintended change, such as masking tape, frisket, and stencils
• Masking (illustration), an art technique that influences the intended perception of a character
• Mask (computing), AND'ing or OR'ing a bit pattern with another bit pattern to select some bits
• Masking agent, a reagent used in chemical analysis which reacts with (thus sequestering) chemical species which may interfere in the analysis
• Sound masking, the intentional introduction of background sounds to improve comfort and privacy
• Spectral mask, a method for reducing adjacent-channel interference in broadcast applications

In Electronic Health Records (EHR’s) data masking, or controlled access, is the process of concealing patient health data from certain healthcare providers. Patients have the right to request the masking of their personal information, making it inaccessible to any physician, or a particular physician, unless a specific reason is provided. Data masking is also performed by healthcare agencies to restrict the amount of information that can be accessed by external bodies such as researchers, health insurance agencies and unauthorised individuals. It is a method used to protect patients’ sensitive information so that privacy and confidentiality are less of a concern. Techniques used to alter information within a patient’s EHR include data encryption, obfuscation, hashing, exclusion and perturbation.